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Brand Finance Unveils its Rankings of the Best CEOs for 2025: Satya Nadella Takes the Lead
The Brand Guardianship Index 2025 features the top 100 CEOs globally, with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella achieving the highest score, and it also examines trends in CEO appointments and the factors influencing leadership.
The Brand Finance Brand Guardianship Index 2025 has published its list of the top 100 CEOs globally, ranked according to brand strength scores calculated from insights provided by analysts, investors, and experts in corporate governance.
Leading the rankings is Satya Nadella of Microsoft, who achieved a brand strength score of 95.6. He is followed by Tim Cook of Apple, scoring 93.2, and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, also at 93.2. The top five is completed by Benedetto Vigna of Ferrari with a score of 89.9 and Sundar Pichai of Google at 89.3. Notably, Elon Musk of Tesla, who moved up from nineteenth last year to sixth this year with a score of 89.1, is also included among the top executives.
Other prominent CEOs within the top ten are Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber of ADNOC, Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Sashi Jagdishan of HDFC Bank, and Wang Chuanfu of BYD.
The index indicates that American CEOs lead the list with forty-two representatives, followed by nine from China, seven from India, and five from Germany, while no other country boasts more than three.
The banking sector is the most represented with fourteen CEOs, followed by industries such as automotive, technology, and retail.
Among the CEOs, the most prevalent educational backgrounds are in engineering, business, and finance.
The youngest CEO in the ranking is Joshua Kobza, 37, who leads Tim Hortons, while the oldest is Zhengfei Ren, 80, the CEO of Huawei.
Approximately half of the CEOs are in their fifties, nearly forty are in their sixties, eleven are under forty-nine, and four are over seventy.
The report also outlines the primary factors influencing CEO reputation in 2025. The leading attribute is a sincere concern for employees, surpassing the focus on sustainability from the previous year.
Other significant traits include the ability to inspire positive change, trust, and understanding of customer needs.
Among the top-ranked executives, Satya Nadella's leadership at Microsoft, characterized by a strong emphasis on cloud computing and artificial intelligence, is underscored by his initial one billion dollar investment in OpenAI in 2019, which has evolved into a multibillion-dollar collaboration resulting in an average annual brand value increase of twenty-six percent.
Jensen Huang's achievements are also highlighted, with NVIDIA’s brand value soaring by ninety-eight percent to eighty-seven point nine billion US dollars, earning a top ten spot among the world’s most valuable brands for 2025.
The index further indicates a growing trend of externally hired CEOs.
In 2023, seventeen percent of CEOs were hired from outside; this rose to twenty percent in 2024 and approached thirty-nine percent in 2025.
Significantly, all women on the list were externally appointed, while only half of the men used internal promotions to reach their positions.
Chanel's CEO Lenna Nair, the highest-ranking woman at nineteenth, exemplifies this phenomenon.
Additionally, the index notes that Thailand is represented in the top 100 by Kongkrapan Intarajang of PTT, who comes in at sixty-six with a brand strength score of 76.4. Several ASEAN CEOs, including Wee Ee Cheong of UOB Bank in Singapore, Khairussaleh Ramli of Maybank in Malaysia, and Tao Duc Thang of Viettel in Vietnam, also performed admirably in the ranking.
Leading the rankings is Satya Nadella of Microsoft, who achieved a brand strength score of 95.6. He is followed by Tim Cook of Apple, scoring 93.2, and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, also at 93.2. The top five is completed by Benedetto Vigna of Ferrari with a score of 89.9 and Sundar Pichai of Google at 89.3. Notably, Elon Musk of Tesla, who moved up from nineteenth last year to sixth this year with a score of 89.1, is also included among the top executives.
Other prominent CEOs within the top ten are Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber of ADNOC, Lei Jun of Xiaomi, Sashi Jagdishan of HDFC Bank, and Wang Chuanfu of BYD.
The index indicates that American CEOs lead the list with forty-two representatives, followed by nine from China, seven from India, and five from Germany, while no other country boasts more than three.
The banking sector is the most represented with fourteen CEOs, followed by industries such as automotive, technology, and retail.
Among the CEOs, the most prevalent educational backgrounds are in engineering, business, and finance.
The youngest CEO in the ranking is Joshua Kobza, 37, who leads Tim Hortons, while the oldest is Zhengfei Ren, 80, the CEO of Huawei.
Approximately half of the CEOs are in their fifties, nearly forty are in their sixties, eleven are under forty-nine, and four are over seventy.
The report also outlines the primary factors influencing CEO reputation in 2025. The leading attribute is a sincere concern for employees, surpassing the focus on sustainability from the previous year.
Other significant traits include the ability to inspire positive change, trust, and understanding of customer needs.
Among the top-ranked executives, Satya Nadella's leadership at Microsoft, characterized by a strong emphasis on cloud computing and artificial intelligence, is underscored by his initial one billion dollar investment in OpenAI in 2019, which has evolved into a multibillion-dollar collaboration resulting in an average annual brand value increase of twenty-six percent.
Jensen Huang's achievements are also highlighted, with NVIDIA’s brand value soaring by ninety-eight percent to eighty-seven point nine billion US dollars, earning a top ten spot among the world’s most valuable brands for 2025.
The index further indicates a growing trend of externally hired CEOs.
In 2023, seventeen percent of CEOs were hired from outside; this rose to twenty percent in 2024 and approached thirty-nine percent in 2025.
Significantly, all women on the list were externally appointed, while only half of the men used internal promotions to reach their positions.
Chanel's CEO Lenna Nair, the highest-ranking woman at nineteenth, exemplifies this phenomenon.
Additionally, the index notes that Thailand is represented in the top 100 by Kongkrapan Intarajang of PTT, who comes in at sixty-six with a brand strength score of 76.4. Several ASEAN CEOs, including Wee Ee Cheong of UOB Bank in Singapore, Khairussaleh Ramli of Maybank in Malaysia, and Tao Duc Thang of Viettel in Vietnam, also performed admirably in the ranking.
